December 12, 2006

Slogan strong

It's hard to disagree with the idea that the US Army really needs a new
slogan. For some mysterious reason it's become dificult for the
military to recruit new soldiers these days. So the Army is spending
200 million dollars a year for a new one. The result is a real
zinger -- "Army
Strong." Maybe you've already heard it. The televsion ad produced
by the New York advertising firm, McCann and Erickson, has a deep male
voice saying, "There's strong, and then there's Army strong."

Interestingly, the adjective comes after the noun it modifies. As
Huddleston and Pullum point out on pages 560-561 of their Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (here),
only "a handful of
adjectives are resticted to postpositive function," such as "flowers
galore, "the city proper," and "restaurants aplenty," and they all are
special in certain ways (read -- better yet buy -- this important book
to find out how). But it seems that those who create slogans,
like poets and lyricists, can do whatever they want with language,
including putting adjective modifiers after nouns. I can recall a
country music song sung by Don Williams, "Some Broken Hearts Never
Mend," in which the first line is "Coffee black, cigarettes, start this
day like all the rest."

Apparently the Army's previous but somewhat unfathomable slogan, "Army
of One," just didn't communicate whatever it was that it was trying to
communicate and its "Be All You Can Be" seems to have worn out whatever
effectiveness it may have had. So the brief "Army Strong" is the
current winner. As slogans go, it seems to be laudatory in comparison
with the uncomfortable feeling of isolation created by "Army of One"
(who wants to fight a war alone anyway?) and by the vague hope offered
by "Be All You Can Be" (note the conditional "can" as opposed to the
more positive "will" here).

I don't know if the Army has tried to copyright "Army Strong" but if it
has, it could run into some problems. For one thing, the US Patent and Trademark
Office regulations don't often allow copyright registration for short
phrases and slogans. And typically the slogan has to be used in the
same manner as the mark. That is, the slogan has to be used to identify
the source of the goods or services, as opposed to being merely
informational, generic, or laudatory, those characteristics that would
make it difficult for consumers to distinguish the product or services
from others. For example, after an electric shaver manufacturer came up
with the slogan, "Proudly made in the USA," the pattent office wouldn't
register it because the slogan didn't identify the product. The same
result for Carvel's slogan, "America's Freshest Ice Cream," which
didn't distinguish the product's source from that of other ice creams.
Most slogans that pass the registration tests can be clearly identified
with their product or service to the extent that when consumers hear or
see the slogan, they can identify it with the source. It's possible
that the army is safe on this one because "Army" is 50% of the entire
slogan -- unless consumers confuse it with the Salvation Army or the
army of some other country.

"Army Strong" is clearly brief and laudatory and whether it identifies
the source of the organization may or may not be up for grabs. On the
other hand, Nike's famous slogan, "Just Do It," and Kentucky Fried
Chicken's "Finger Lickin' Good," neither of which identify the source
of their products, developed what trademark law calls, "secondary
meaning," protecting these slogans from use by others. But this usually
takes time and heaps of money. Seconday meaning arises when consumers
eventually come to identify a trademark or slogan with their products
or services. In the now famous case of McDonald's v. Quality Inns
International (here),
it was the secondary meaning resulting from millions of dollars in
promotion and advertising that enabled McDonald's to protect its Mc-
prefix to this day. Maybe spending 200 million dollars will do this for
the army.

Startlingly, by creating and promoting a two-word slogan, McCann and
Erickson collect a hundred million dollars per word ( I know, a lot of
this goes into advertising). But it might be nice if linguists could
make that kind of money.

Update: Several readers point out that they don't see the slogan as a noun with a following adjective modifier. Using (rather good) examples, such as "Ford Tough," "dog tired," and "butt ugly," they didn't think the word order strange. Maybe they're right. But it still sounds odd to me. And maybe that's what the slogan is supposed to do -- which might make it a good one.